Painted Crimson
by Deception's Call
Summary: John never thought that a single sentence could save his life.


**Just a short one shot about an idea that popped into my head today :)**

_Summary: John never thought that a single sentence could save his life. _

**Disclaimer: I do not own Sherlock.**

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_Painted Crimson_

John never thought that the colour red would end up defining his life.

Red meant danger, red meant adventure, red meant the colour of blood spilt on the floor.

John was a soldier, through and through, unmistakable and undeniable. He had seen death, he had seen mercilessness, and he had seen how heartless the world could be.

He was also a doctor, so John had seen the blood on his hands from fallen blood and deep wounds, sewn up shut for the life of the patient.

His life felt like that sometimes, an open wound sewn shut by weak strings, ready to tear and bleed again.

Bleed right onto the pavement. Like Sherlock.

_Sherlock._

His best friend. The man he cared about most. The man that saved his life when they first met.

Sherlock was a lot of things.

He was arrogant, cold, cruel to an extent. Sherlock Holmes was many things, but if there was anything that Sherlock wasn't, it was a liar.

Sherlock Holmes valued the truth too much to be a liar.

And there was that colour again. Red. Sherlock Holmes had shown him a completely different sort of battlefield, but a battlefield all the same.

There was danger and excitement, and John's not going to lie when he says that it was so much like the war. An adventure lay beyond the walls of 221B, red blood staining the streets permanently, leaving nothing but a memory of what was once was, and who was once lost.

A memory of a certain consulting detective. Of a madman and a genius. Of a friend and a hero. Nothing but silence and wrinkled old sheets of paper and a rumpled blue robe hanging off a chair and _Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock. _

His presence, haunting John like the ghost that he was, makes John wish that he could finally lay to rest.

These demons, splattered all over the pavement and newspapers, leave him with nothing but a gaping hole in his heart and an ache in his chest.

Baker Street is so lonely. It's too lonely and too quiet.

Where are the violin noises in the middle of the night? Where are the explosions rattling the room? Where is the _life?_

It's cold and dead and everything John was before he met Sherlock. Something was missing, something was empty and something wasn't right. Nothing was right. His mind just buzzes at him at night, keeping him awake waiting for the _one moment _where he's going to hear Sherlock's playing lull him to sleep. He's waiting and waiting and waiting and always waiting but nothing ever comes.

His wound is open again, bleeding and rushing out and leaving him pale and too weak to stitch himself back up. He can't come back after this, it's too much and the pain just won't stop.

It opened when the man that saved his life took his own.

But even if John is alive right now, he might as well have been dead.

_God there was just so much blood. _So much blood on the pavement, weaving and spreading so, so, _so _quickly like a rose in bloom.

His pale skin decorated and painted with crimson, his blue eyes wide and open and _lifeless _and _dead _and god it just isn't right.

He wanted to scream. He wanted to run and scream and hide and never come back. He wanted to forget and imagine that none of this is real, that Sherlock is down there, that he was just sleeping.

_But Sherlock is sleeping,_ his mind tells him.

_No!_

He's bleeding hard and fast and life is draining out, and John can feel himself slip away already. He is already dead, just a lifeless body walking around London, with the ghost of his best friend following along beside him.

He wants to see Sherlock. He screams at the air, invisible and left with nothing and just tells Sherlock to _take me with you! _But Sherlock doesn't show and John feels abandoned once again.

They said that a friend would help you move and a best friend would help you move bodies, but if you have to move your best friend's body, you're on your own.

John walks alone in a sea of blood. Blood from his patient's wounds. Blood from soldiers. Blood from cases with Sherlock. Blood from Sherlock himself.

Blood from his own wound.

Red and blood. Red and danger. Red and death. Red and adventure. There's just too much red and John just wants to close his eyes and forget.

He hits his head against the door because he _just can't forget. _And he feels Mrs. Hudson screaming at him in fright telling him to stop because he's scaring her and then John is suddenly _so sorry. _

He walks through the lifeless ocean of people, through the streets in the city that turned their back on his best friend, on _him, _and wishes to see it burn.

He can't stay. He can't stay in this city.

Then he sees it. That one thing painted in red that keeps him going. A mural on the wall at the side of the building with the one sentence that brought John back to life.

_I believe in Sherlock Holmes. _

Red and hope.

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**Alright so this was seriously quickly written up, and what prompted me to do it is just because I love the entire 'I believe in Sherlock Holmes' concept. **

**So explaining the 'red and hope' thing is that John begins to hope that those meager numbers who still believe in Sherlock Holmes are going to help clear his name and prove him innocence, providing Sherlock with closure and John with solace in knowing that there are people out there who have not turned their back, so if they haven't given up hope, then why should he?**

**I hope it was clear, because to me it isn't necessarily. **

**Anyway thank you for reading! **

**Review? Because your feedback is the Holmes to my Watson and means so much to me :)**


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